


Sollux: proceed to day twenty-three.

by Laylah



Series: Petstuck [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Found Family, Gen, Pets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-22
Updated: 2012-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-04 03:45:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/389383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's day twenty-three and you can't keep going like this. You're going to let your guard down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sollux: proceed to day twenty-three.

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently all i want in life right now is Pettins For Tiny Alien Nerdkitten.
> 
> Also you can now subscribe to individual series, so if you want to follow this continuity there's the straightforward way to do it. ^^

You have been in the Striders' apartment for twenty-three days. They still haven't started talking about getting rid of you. Wait. "Re-homing" you. You're doing your best to keep your guard up, because the longer they wait to do it the more likely it is to suck, but you can feel yourself slipping.

On day five you stopped feeling the need to hide in small dark spaces (under Strider A's bed; in the entryway closet under the sword trap; once, wedged into the space on top of the fridge). On day nine you started coming out to the living room when they were home and watching what they were doing with the television. On day ten Strider B offered to let you make your own profile on the Xbox and didn't act surprised that you could put in your own name with no hesitation.

On day thirteen Strider A asked you if you enjoyed reading, and you hesitated a split second too long before you answered that trolls weren't supposed to be taught to read. On day fifteen he brought you a battered little e-reader already loaded with a dozen books in various genres. You know it was probably just a placating gesture to keep you from being bored, but at least he was willing to put the effort in. You read all of the Complacency of the Learned series, and it's totally unrealistic but still pretty cool.

On day twenty you sat on the couch with them for dinner and later dessert: an apple pie they had to stick in the oven to warm up, easily the size of your head. You ate three pieces and even when you were buzzing with energy from all that sugar they didn't yell at you.

It's day twenty-three and you can't keep going like this. You're going to let your guard down. You remember Strider A insisting that they were on your side, that first night. You'd like to believe that: it makes you feel good in a wiggly, primitive little part of your brain. From the reading you've done—and how fucked is that, learning about what's natural for your own species by reading about it?—you know that trolls who are left to their own devices (oh wait, "wild" trolls) tend to form small, tightly knit social groups. Cohorts. Your instinct-brain wants to have a few others around that you can depend on.

Your stupid instinct-brain is going to get the rest of you screwed over pretty bad, you're almost sure. It doesn't listen when you tell it to shut up, though.

The Striders are up on the roof of the building strifing each other. This is apparently a thing they do often. You aren't allowed to go up there and watch ("too soon," they said when you asked why not). You picture it as looking a lot like one of their fighting games, but with less jiggle physics. They take their shitty blunt swords and a few bottles of Gatorade and are gone for an hour or so, sometimes even more, and come back down teasing each other and snarking and ready to order food for delivery. From the bruising afterward, it looks like Strider B always loses. Somehow this still seems to be satisfying for both of them.

You hear footsteps in the hall and pause the game you're playing—just in time to catch Strider A saying, "Guess I'll talk to him about it, then." Your heart sinks as the key rattles in the lock. You hit the pause button with more force than necessary and go back to your game, trying to hold down the trembling tension as your stupid instinct-brain does what it does best and gets sloppy emotion goo on everything. They say hi when they come in and you nod, not looking up, trying to act like you don't care. You don't. You'll be fine.

Fuck, you hope that wherever they send you isn't too much worse. You run through options in your head as your character strafes an enemy position. You could try running away, but you really don't think you'd make it long as a feral. You're too small and not aggressive enough and you might _know_ a lot of things but that doesn't mean you could _do_ all the stuff you'd need to if you wanted to get by. You could try begging for mercy, awful as that sounds. You'd do it if you were sure it would work. Same with letting them do sex things to you. It would be something you could bargain with if you thought they'd take it, but from what you've seen of them you don't think they would.

They disappear into their rooms. You hear the shower running a minute later. You switch to your sniper rifle and take a careful headshot. The Xbox pings to let you know you've gotten an achievement for that. Video game problems are so easy. You advance to the next checkpoint. One of them bangs on the bathroom door and yells at the other one to hurry up and not use all the hot water. You switch to your plasma cannon.

You are annihilating the enemy commander when Strider A sits down on the couch next to you. His hair is wet and he smells like soap. You thumb the green button in the middle of the controller and put it down.

"Okay," you say, turning to face him, your hands balled up in your lap. "Hit me."

He gives you a crooked smile. "Should have figured you'd notice something was up," he says. "All right, let me level with you. You know me and Dave have been doing this fostering thing for a while, right?" That seems painfully obvious, but you nod numbly all the same. "So we've seen a lot of trolls come and go through here, some of them in pretty bad shape. It's kind of one of those things where the more you do it, the more you know it needs doing. I don't think we could give it up, at this point."

You nod shortly and then you're squeezing your eyes shut and telling your instinct-brain to just _fuck off_ until you're done here please ugh. "Get it over with," you say. "You're getting rid of me tho you have room for thomeone elthe."

"Hey, no," Strider A says, and then, "no," again when you don't move. "Not where this is going, dude." He puts a hand on your shoulder and you open your eyes warily. " _Totally_ not where I was going with this," he says.

"Tho..." You don't want to ask. You don't want to _hope_ , but these have been such a good twenty-three days.

"So, me and my bro talked it over," Strider A says, "and we were thinking, maybe, if we're all on the same page about it, you might want to stick around for good. I know you came from an only-troll house, and having rescues around can be stressful. So I want you to know that up front, and have a chance to say so if you'd rather go someplace quieter." You open your mouth to say _yes_ (yeth), _keep me_ and he holds up a hand to stop you. "Think about it a little bit before you answer, okay?"

"How long?" you ask.

"Gotta have it laid out clear, huh?" he says. "Give it at least until tomorrow. Take longer if you're still not sure."

"Okay," you say. You don't think you're going to say anything different tomorrow than you would right this minute, but he gets to make the rules. "I gueth maybe thith would be a good time to thtart thinking of you by your acthual nameth."

He does the eyebrow thing. You're pretty certain by now that's a good sign. "Actual names?" he says.

"Inthtead of Thtrider A and Thtrider B," you say.

Strider B—fine, Dave—wanders into the living room in time to hear that part, and he says, "What, not Douchebag A and Douchebag B?"

"Not thpethific enough," you say. They let you say this kind of shit. They don't get mad. "That could refer to anybody."

Dirk holds out his fist and you bump your knuckles against his. Stupid instinct-brain makes your subvocal cords start to hum, and your cheeks get a little hot because it's embarrassing to do that in front of someone, but they don't give you crap for it. You think they might sort of get what it means, as much as humans can.

They order food, and you scoop out about half the carton of your favorite, the chicken in sticky-sweet brown goo, and you're pretty sure it has never tasted better. They have a stupid competition to see who can stuff more of an egg roll in his mouth at one time and Dave says something really rude about it when Dirk wins, and you don't catch what Dirk says back but it makes Dave make gagging noises and complain about too much information. You start to wonder if you can exhaust your subvocal cords and if so how long it takes.

After dinner the three of you have an impromptu fighting game tournament. The Striders switch between spinning records and being your opponent. They're dirty cheaters but they don't mind if you are, too, so it almost works out. It would be better if you were fast enough to screw up their combos more often, but it's still good.

It's late by the time they shut everything down—not just turn the volume down so the neighbors will stop banging on the walls, but actually turn off the speakers and put the computers to sleep. It's almost trollish, the schedule they run on. You change from your jeans into your pajama pants in the bathroom (it doesn't even bother you anymore that the door doesn't lock) and then go padding back into Dirk's room. You have a pile there, in the corner, some spare cords and cables layered with those fuck-ugly plushes that Dirk likes so much.

Dirk is already in bed. The lights are off, but you see just fine without them. Your pile is right there. It's comfortable and familiar. It's not what your instincts tell you to want.

You stand there and argue with yourself for a little bit longer because you sort of have to. This is stupid. Just because he told you that you could stay, you shouldn't want to—want to—you hate having instincts sometimes. They get in the way so much.

Clearly you've been standing there long enough to make your stupidity obvious. Dirk rolls over. "Sol, you okay?" he says.

"Yeth," you say. "Fine." You drop your jeans on your pile and step away from it.

When you get to the edge of his bed you can see his expression: wary, confused, eyebrows drawn down in a frown, eyes just slightly narrowed. He isn't bothering to mask his expression the way he does with the light on, and you wonder for a second if he knows how well you can see. "Sol?" he says.

He doesn't stop you from pulling back his blanket, and he's holding very very still when you climb into his bed. He's so much bigger than you, and you realize as you lie down that you don't have any idea where to put your limbs. Why does anyone want to do this? Why do _you_?

"Talk to me," Dirk says quietly, really serious. "What are you looking for here?" He feels tense against you. It's weird.

"You thaid you would be my cohort," you say. Fuck, you sound defensive. "Did you jutht mean it metaphorically?"

Dirk smiles crookedly. "Listen to you," he says. "Metaphorically, he says. I know guys who got through high school without being able to use words that big."

You preen a little. You're entirely self-taught and it's like he's petting your pride directly when he notices you're good at it. That sort of makes it okay to not quite know what you're doing here. Maybe you can let him know. "I never really...got thith clothe with Douchebagth A through D," you tell him. He snorts. "Tho...I don't know where to put my armth."

This time his noise is less of a snort and more like an actual laugh. "I'm afraid nobody does," he says. "There isn't really a right answer."

"Oh," you say. You feel silly and reassured at the same time. "Then...?"

"Here." He shifts, opening his arms and sliding one around you, under your neck and warm against your back. You pillow your head on his shoulder. Your bottom arm has to smush up against your chest, and that's awkward, but the top one just drapes over his chest and that's not bad at all. He's so warm. "So this is what you want, huh?" he says. You can feel the vibrations of his voice in his chest. "A little cuddling?"

"If that'th okay," you say, as you realize that maybe you're asking for something unreasonable. Most of what you know about human socializing comes from watching television at the Douchebags' house, and the Striders don't act like that much, and just because they talk like they understand what you need doesn't mean it's what they need, and—"Did I jutht thart thomething elthe?" Now you're the one who's tense.

But Dirk says, "Whew," a big sigh of air leaving his lungs, and you can feel how he relaxes all the way against you. "No, it's totally cool. I just wanted to make sure _you_ weren't looking for something else. Cause I like you a lot but not in a pants-off way."

"Oh. Good." The thing that had just knotted up under your ribs unknots again. "Becauthe I would've, but I don't really want to."

Dirk shakes his head. "We don't pull that bullshit in this house," he says. "Everybody involved has to want to, or the game is called on account of consent fail."

Your hum starts back up and you don't bother feeling embarrassed about it this time. "That'th a good rule," you say.

"Ought to be everybody's fucking rule," Dirk says. He sounds a little bit angry, but it's not scary for some reason, and then you realize why: what he's doing is a human's way of growling protectively. You rub your cheek against his shoulder and your hum gets louder. Dirk shifts, rolling toward you so he's lying on his side too, and drapes his arm over you, pulling you close in against his chest. "You're safe here, okay? We got your back, me and Dave."

You nod fiercely, winding your fingers into his shirt and holding on tight. "I'm going to thay yeth tomorrow," you tell him. "I'd have to be thtupid to give thith up."

Dirk kisses your forehead, right at your hairline. "You're miles away from stupid," he says. "So I guess we'll make it official in the morning."

"Yeth," you say. You feel good, relieved and balanced and comfortable, in this little place in the back of your mind that has been twitchy and defensive for so long that you forgot how to feel anything else. It's so weird having that change, you find yourself sort of shaking. Dirk just holds you, stroking your back slowly, his breathing steady and slow. You hope he's comfortable, because suddenly you really want him to just let you stay right there, to let you fall asleep still wrapped up in this safe feeling.

He does.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Sollux: proceed to day twenty-three. [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/526840) by [Opalsong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opalsong/pseuds/Opalsong)




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